


we fall (but our souls are flying)

by the merienes tranch (lilhalphys)



Series: the house is on fire, the sky is falling [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Multi, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 12:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18366116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilhalphys/pseuds/the%20merienes%20tranch
Summary: the night before; trent ikithon's home





	we fall (but our souls are flying)

**Author's Note:**

> i didn't know what the phrase "word vomit" meant until i wrote this. i was just afflicted with a very vivid, short image in my mind. i hope you all enjoy

[and oh, my love, my love]

 

The sky is akin to a piece of fine paper spilled with ink, the stars and moons the last pinpricks of untainted canvas peeking through. Sitting amongst the sprawling countrysides near Rexxentrum under these heavens is a house where three children live with their teacher.

Gentle nighttime ambience fills the room of the ramshackle wooden hut near the house in which the three children live. There is but one bedroom, more than big enough for each of their three mattresses to have enough space to give the impression of privacy. 

But no such thing has been attempted. All three mattresses are shoved together in the far corner of the room, the rest of the space housing haphazard piles of clothes, books, and components that their teacher would be furious if he saw. 

In the moonlight, these mounds of their slowly eroding childhoods almost look like waiting, hungry monsters. A looming reminder of the Professor, of ever-nearing Graduation, of the Empire, poking at the back of their minds and itching under the skin of their forearms.

Bren is not afraid of the monsters, but his particular talents make it easy, so easy, for him to light a candle and banish them away.

“Still scared of the dark, Ermendrud?” Eodwulf jeers from their bed. Astrid, across the room, packing for her trip home, laughs.

“No, but,” Bren doesn’t mention what they all know, that they’ve all found far more to be afraid of, “I figured we might as well pretend to be studying, don’t want to upset him anymore than we already have.”

“Right.” Eodwulf pats the bed beside him. “Come here. Astrid’s taking too long to pack and I’m getting lonely.”

Bren scoffs, jovially, as Astrid shouts out “I’m right here!” between her own laughs. He crawls into bed beside Eodwulf, relaxing as he feels the familiar discomfort of hay and lumpy mattress digging into his side, the comfort of Eodwulf’s warmth and steady heartbeat. 

Astrid and Eodwulf continue to speak as Astrid packs, as the candle burns out, as the monsters occupy the room once again.

Bren does not get back up to relight it. He cannot bring himself to sacrifice the lazy, unconditional comfort of the three of them in the familiar room, cannot allow himself to stop pretending that this will likely be over before he can catch himself. 

Even as he closes his eyes, he does not sleep, cannot sleep until Astrid joins him and Eodwulf in bed, hasn’t been able to in months.

 

[and oh, my love, my love]

 

Perhaps they are remembered as scourges of Blumenthal. A ghostly, robed group of four who come in the night and end half a dozen lives without remorse.

Perhaps they are remembered as a series of freak accidents - a break in, a batch of spoiled meat, a grease fire. 

Astrid and Eodwulf will go on to do great things, they say. Prodigies. Arcane masters, turning points in the war.

And Bren will be put away, for his own sake, until he is better.

Until he is useful.

 

[we both go down together]

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed! please kudos/comment if you enjoyed!


End file.
